To the east of this point the soil is sandy and rises into barren dunes 6 feet high. One can tell at the first glance how they are formed, especially on a day like this, when the westerly storm sweeps the drift-sand before it in clouds, often hiding completely the steep rocky walls on the right bank of the river. During high-water the river deposits quantities of mud and sand on the shallows, which are exposed and dry up in winter. The west wind carries away the silted material to pile up dunes farther east; where these lie low enough, the next high-water clears them away, and when it has fallen the process is repeated. Thus in the valley of the Tsangpo a continuous displacement of solid matter from west to east is going on. It is not alone that the river excavates the bed with its own weight, and loads its water with masses of mud; but also the material deposited at the banks is borne away by the wind which comes to the help of the water. Wind and flowing water work together in harmony to the same end, washing out this gigantic drainage channel deeper and deeper. They have laboured at the work for untold thousands of years, and the result is the Tsangpo valley as we see it to-day.
After a ride of eight hours we came to a small village composed of thirty houses, called Rungma (Illustration 104), where the tents were set up in a garden among poplars and willows. How pleasant it seemed to us, who had passed a whole half-year on the desolate Chang-tang plateau, to hear the wind soughing again through the leafless branches of the trees! Now the fires were no longer fed with dried dung; dry faggots crackled between the tents and threw a bright light on the trees and the Tibetans.
On February 8 we had another long ride. Ngurbu Tundup complained that his mule had run away, so that he must stay behind, and begged me to pay him the remainder of the reward I had promised. But this trick was too transparent.
We suspected that the letters had not reached Gyangtse after all. However, we were not far from the village when Ngurbu came riding after us on a borrowed horse with jingling bells. When we had pitched our camp, Ngurbu was immediately sent off as a punishment to Shigatse, to inform Kung Gushuk that we should arrive the next day, and that I wished to have a good house prepared for me. That was a thoughtless step, for if Kung Gushuk had told what he knew to a Chinaman, we should have been stopped at the last moment before reaching the town.
The winding highway runs further and further eastwards along the northern bank of the Tsangpo, past fields laid out in terraces and watered by the river. It is astonishing to find in Tibet so much cultivable land, and such a number of inhabited villages with solid stone houses and gardens.
At Lamo-tang the river washes the mountainous foot of the left bank, and here a narrow break-neck path runs in zigzags up the slopes. But it need not be used except when the water is high. Now we travel along the embankment beside the river. The river has quite a different appearance to-day: its surface is half covered with porous ice-blocks, but then at night there were 33.8 degrees of frost. Leaping and clattering they drive downstream and graze the fringe of ice attached to the bank, piling up on it small white walls of ice. They keep in the line of the strongest current, and often remain stranded on sandbanks which show a reddish-brown tinge amid the clear green water. A grand landscape under a blue sky and among ponderous fissured mountain masses! In the afternoon the drift-ice had decreased in quantity, and in the evening, before our camp, had disappeared altogether (Illustration 101).
Upwards over the extreme point of a rocky projection by a stony staircase where we prefer to go on foot. Then we descend again to the level valley-bottom, past more villages and monasteries, always surrounded by chhortens and manis, and often, like the Tikze-gompa in Ladak, perched on rocks. Tanak-puchu is a great valley coming down from the north, and its river irrigates the fields in Tanak. I could not obtain a clear description of this valley: all I heard was that it came from a pass to the north; so I do not know whether it comes from the Trans-Himalaya, like the My-chu and Shang-chu valleys. If such is the case, however, then the eastern watershed of the My-chu is a hydrographic boundary between it and the Tanak-puchu, not the Shang-chu. The question can only be solved by future investigations on the spot.
| 104. House in the Village of Rungma. |
| 105. Garden of the Tashi Lama in the Village of Tanak. |
In the Tanak (“The Black Horse”) valley we encamped in a pretty garden (Illustration 105), where a small house with a gaily painted verandah is occupied by the Tashi Lama, when the prelate pays his annual visit to the temple Tashi-gembe. The garden is situated on a terrace of detritus, which descends sheer down to the river and affords a magnificent view of the Tsangpo. The river is here called Sangchen, or sometimes Tsangpo-Chimbo, that is, the great river. The Tsangpo is the river of Tibet par excellence. According to Waddell this name is sometimes so written that it is a strict translation of the name Brahmaputra, which means “Son of Brahma.” We have already mentioned the name Yere-tsangpo, and farther westwards we shall meet with other names. In the lower part of its passage through the Himalayas it is called Dihong, and it assumes the name of Brahmaputra only when it emerges from the mountains to water the plains of Assam.